The present invention relates to an apparatus for a playback/recording disk contained in a cartridge.
Recently, a disk player for playing a disk while the disk is rotatably contained within a relatively flat cartridge has been developed. The cartridge containing the disk is inserted into a casing of the disk player through a slot opening in a front panel of the casing. The casing encompasses a playing mechanism of the disk player. The playing mechanism is formed by a turntable, a pickup and so forth, a cartridge holder and a conveyance mechanism. The cartridge holder houses the inserted cartridge, and the conveyance mechanism conveys the cartridge holder and thus the cartridge from a level even with the slot to a playback level or position on the turntable and also operates to return the cartridge from the playback position to the level of the slot. On the cartridge holder there is a mechanism for urging the cartridge toward the slot to eject the cartridge through the slot to enable the whole cartridge to be manually removed from the player. A proposed urging mechanism includes a spring and levers coupled to the spring to engage and protrude the cartridge out of the slot by the urging force of the spring. It has also been proposed to use a locking mechanism for locking the urging mechanism in place to prevent the urging force from acting while the cartridge holder and cartridge are being conveyed by the conveyance mechanism and while the disk is being played. After playback, the cartridge holder and cartridge are returned to the level of the slot, and the urging mechanism is released to eject the cartridge. However, a disk player constructed as described above has a problem in that the whole cartridge springs out of the slot due to the urging force of the urging mechanism as soon as it is released, i.e. as soon as the locking mechanism is released. The cartridge can thus be subjected to damage.